Today was a rough day. Not because it was too busy, not because customers were difficult, but because I had an oppressive headache all. day. long. It felt like a weight, dragging me down and making it difficult to focus, and of the course the harder I tried to concentrate, the worse the headache got. It was the kind of headache that also makes you feel sick at your stomach as well. I felt guilty I wasn't at 100% but I did my best.
It was actually kind of a strange day. I had no families come into the department for the first couple of hours, but quite a few, shall we say, eccentric adults. I had to call security twice to check out people that were hanging around and behaving like they might be under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or having a mental health issue. I tried to help one man find a ballet book for his niece, but we didn't have quite what he was looking for, so he asked me to recommend a bookstore and find him bus information to get there, which I was happy to do.
Then a woman came in who needed materials to help her with tutoring a teenager who was recovering from a stroke, and she was looking for some kind of test or assessment tool to help her determine where he was at to start with. Unfortunately, all I could find where things related to the GED, AP tests, and college entrance exams. She decided to try the GED practice tests and fortunately we had one study guide in, so I gave her the information and directed her to the appropriate floor, and also suggested she try the library for the College of Education at the local university. Fortunately, once she got upstairs, the associate that was working at that desk knew exactly what she was looking for, even though neither the patron nor I had been able to find anything in the catalog, or using Google. Without a title or author, it was hard coming up with just the right search terms to find it. I felt bad I hadn't been able to find it, but was very glad someone else knew just the right book for her. It was a series called Making The Grade, by the way.
We did have a little bit of excitement. We are renovating our staff room a little bit, in order to give us more workspace, and in the process of clearing stuff out one of the children's librarians discovered a tiny safe, bolted to the floor, hidden in the very back corner. It was only about 4"x8"x4" or so, and had been hidden by all the things piled around it for so long, there was not a single staff member left in the building who knew anything about it. Of course we were all intensely curious as to what it's purpose was and what might be inside it. Perhaps some long-forgotten petty cash? Important documents? A shrunken head?
At the manager's suggestion, they looked through the senior children's librarian's desk, where they found an assortment of miscellaneous keys. Soon, they found that one of them fit one of the locks on the safe, but we still needed a second key. So the search continued, and another set of keys was located. Lo and behold, one of them fit the top lock. The manager turned both keys, and....it opened! And inside it was.........
.......wait for it...........
...............wait for it.........
.................................another set of keys! Ha!
Very anti-climactic, reminiscent of Geraldo Rivera's embarassing docu-melodrama of the opening of Al Capone's [empty] vault. So much for our bit of mystery and intrigue ;) But at least it made the afternoon a little more interesting.
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